Also, here's Clare Briggs on Feb. 16, 1919.
5/26/2008
5/25/2008
The Bankruptcy of the Imagination and Civilized Warfare
"Mr. Lloyd George, at the Peace Conference, said that he was persuaded to the League of Nations idea when recently he saw in France the innumerable graves of the fallen covering acres.
Perpend. The statement is worth considering. Note that it is at the end of the war he is speaking, that it is the number of graves he is moved by, and that what moves him to realise the horrors of war is the graves of dead men. What was Mr Lloyd George’s imagination doing before he went to France and saw the graves? Would it help on the League, think you, if someone took his child by the hand and showed him all the acres of all the graves in Europe; or all the mutilated in the hospitals when their wounds are being dressed; or all the asylums when the madmen are having their morning rave; or all the St Dunstan’s in the world; or all the dying and dead babies?
The war has beggared the imagination. If a woman loses five sons, she is not smitten five times as much as if she lost only one. All suffering has limits beyond which the heart is insensible. We are no more appalled at the death of ten million men than at that of ten thousand, or, indeed, if it be under our eyes, ten or one. It is a fact that we are forgetting the war- already — those who weren’t in it. Skating, dancing, political squabbles are all the go — pigs over their pannage. If a woman has lost a son, compensations are manifold — e.g., some gewgaw from the King’s hands at Buckingham Palace. What the son thought or suffered no one knows, because he’s dead. If he survives he wants to remain dumb, or lacks capacity to express his thought about the hell and damnation of war. If he had such a capacity, his hearers would lack the imaginative sympathy to be scalded by his boiling ink."
-WNP Barbellion, Feb. 16, 1919.
5/22/2008
5/18/2008
5/17/2008
4/30/2008
4/29/2008
How to...Blame the Media
Dave Pirkola
In college I used to walk a couple miles, sometimes through deep Michigan snow, to buy comic books at Apparitions. I went there at least once a month for the 5 years I lived in Grand Rapids. I remember talking to Dave about Carl Barks--he was big fan--and his cat. He's a classic cranky/jovial comic book store owner, salt of the weird earth. The other week when I was in town I stopped by but Dave wasn't working that day, and the guy who was, who had a mustache that curled at the tips into actual spirals, told me the cat had died and Dave was feeling pretty down about it. I bought an old Pogo collection. I just learned that Dave was shot last Friday night during a robbery but he's hanging on. We're really hoping for a smooth speedy recovery and that they find the shooter. Here's a link you'd like to help him out with medical bills, etc. I hope to have some art in an auction they're putting on, and I'll update with info once I know what's up.
The Stand-Alone Brain and the Thickly-Beating Heart
"...Under normal circumstances, experiences are had by a person, not by a stand-alone brain. The brain of an experiencing person is not isolated[...]it is in a body. Corresponding to this is the fact that when, for example, I see something I like, or someone I love, my brain, or some small part of it, is not the only part of me to light up. My heart may beat faster, or more thickly; a smile may appear on my face; and my step may be a little jauntier. The effects do not stop there. My body is located in a currently experienced environment; and, since I am human, that environment is situated in a world that is extended in all spatial, temporal, cultural directions. This world, too, may be transformed by my encounter with the loved one’s face, and I may think differently about it. For the extraordinary thing about human beings – and what captures what is human – is that they transcend their bodies; that human experience is not solitary sentience but has a public face; it belongs to a community of minds. This is a process that has developed over many hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of years since hominids parted company from the monkeys. The neuromythologist, trying to find citizens and their worlds in neurones, stuffs all that has been created by the collective of brains back into a stand-alone brain; indeed into a small part of such a brain. True, we require a brain to participate in the community of minds; but that participation is not to be reduced to activity in bits of brains."
-from Raymond Tallis, here
4/15/2008
4/12/2008
The Feathered Ogre Appears
For a slideshow I'm doing next weekend at my old alma mater,* I've been going through my notes for the 3 stories that originally appeared in the Drawn & Quarterly Showcase #1. Here's a note to myself about how the F. Ogre appearance should go down. I'll try to put some more of these notes and sketches up here, but no promises. You can read more about the Feathered Ogre in my book Curses.*located near the original 28th Street, how could I resist?
4/03/2008
4/02/2008
3/28/2008
Room for Misconceptions
“When we stop looking at things, we make all kinds of crazy generalizations. We refer to things and use words and we don’t know what we’re talking about. Look at the history of other races. We think we can say things when we are not looking carefully enough to see what the right thing really should be. Images are a corrective to the text, and the text is a corrective to the image. When you deal with one alone, there’s room for misconceptions,” he said.
-Ben Katchor, one of our greatest living cartoonists, in an interview with New Jersey Jewish News. It's an interesting quote, wise words! but/and it's a few steps removed from its original context so it may be roomier in here. (But there's room for misconceptions and then there's room to breathe)
3/26/2008
3/18/2008
Ganges 2
There's some pages from Ganges #2 floating around the web here and here and here. We hope it will convince you to buy our comic book and we hope you will enjoy it. It should be out in mid-April.
NOTE: The panel reproduced here has Glenn saying "I'll probably just vote for Nader." People please take note, the story takes place in 2000, this panel is taken out of context, and should in no way be understood as my supporting Nader's candidacy then or now! Glenn is a fictional character, and like most Americans sometimes votes for the wrong candidates. You can find more insightful commentary on contemporary America in Ganges #2, out in mid-April!!
3/14/2008
2/29/2008
2/28/2008
The Rare Sound of Laughter
"...rippled through the august chamber."Exxon Mobil, the giant oil corporation appearing before the Supreme Court yesterday, had earned a profit of nearly $40 billion in 2006, the largest ever reported by a U.S. company -- but that's not what bothered Roberts. What bothered the chief justice was that Exxon was being ordered to pay $2.5 billion -- roughly three weeks' worth of profits -- for destroying a long swath of the Alaska coastline in the largest oil spill in American history.
"So what can a corporation do to protect itself against punitive-damages awards such as this?" Roberts asked in court.
The lawyer arguing for the Alaska fishermen affected by the spill, Jeffrey Fisher, had an idea. "Well," he said, "it can hire fit and competent people."
The rare sound of laughter rippled through the august chamber. The chief justice did not look amused.
-Dana Milbank, Washington Post
What a sentence.
2/21/2008
Peace Lessons
Today is the 50th anniversary of the Peace Symbol. When I was in junior high school, circa 1990-1, one of my teachers told us that the symbol was anti-Christian, designed as an upside down cross with its arms broken downward, which is how Apostle Peter was crucified. Unfortunately it wasn't until years later that I learned that this was not the case.
1/04/2008
12/07/2007
Highly Recommended Books That are Drawn in Pencil
1. I really thought Warren Craghead's How To Be Everywhere was an incredible book.
2. Also in pencil, Curio Cabinet #3 goes on my short list of perfect mini-comics--in ink. Currently hard to find. I'll let you know when I figure out where you can get one.
11/30/2007
11/25/2007
11/16/2007
11/14/2007
11/11/2007
11/07/2007
11/06/2007
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